


I Was Afraid I'd Eat Your Brains

by Mosca



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: M/M, Other, POV Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Porn Watching, Symbiote Sex (Marvel), Xenophilia, tater tots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 19:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16939677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: Venom loves a few things about Earth.





	I Was Afraid I'd Eat Your Brains

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains: aliens not understanding human gender norms, shade thrown at political pundits, canon-consistent playful discussion of murder, and a tiny portion of holiday cheer.
> 
> Thanks to [MarcellaBianca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcellaBianca/pseuds/MarcellaBianca) for beta reading and encouragement!
> 
> The title is from "Conversation 16," because [Sandyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/pseuds/sandyk) and I made a deal about titling our fic with lyrics by The National throughout 2018.

Venom loves tater tots. They’re the first thing he loved about Earth. Before Eddie, he thought he knew what he liked to eat: live meat, especially if it had bones or a carapace that crunched. He loved the gurgle of fresh blood and the tingle of still-firing neurons. But inside Eddie, everything is filtered through human taste and smell. Humans like meat, but they crave salt, sugar, and fat. Tater tots contain all of those things, and they have a satisfying crunch, like tiny heads.

-ooo-

Venom hates coffee. All human intoxicants throw off the delicate equilibrium of symbiosis, but coffee is the worst that Eddie has subjected him to. Venom tolerates a beer once in a while, in exchange for Eddie’s comfort. Coffee, though: Eddie’s circulation races, his excretory system goes haywire, and he overloads with poor ideas born of irritability and overstimulation. “But it wakes me up in the morning,” Eddie protests.

“Leave that to me,” Venom says.

Eddie scoffs, because he can’t argue. Venom is very protective of Eddie’s sleep schedule.

“Feed me, and you’ll have more than enough energy to get through the day.”

Eddie sighs, pours his coffee down the sink, and gets the bag of fish sticks out of the freezer. Venom likes fish sticks. They’re like tater tots with a meaty surprise in the center. 

-ooo-

Venom loves masturbation. Eddie doesn’t engage in it for weeks after they merged, until one evening when he grows surly and restless. Venom takes stock of their vital functions and finds Eddie’s reproductive hormones surging. “If you need to seek a partner, I’ll keep quiet,” Venom says.

“It’d be weird with you watching,” Eddie says. “I guess I’m going to have to get over that if I ever want to - I was just going to jerk off anyway.”

Before Venom can ask what this entails, Eddie is sitting in front of his computer with his feet on his desk and his pants bunched around his knees. Eddie plays a video of a human displaying its increasingly aroused reproductive organs, and he stimulates his own organ with his hands. It doesn’t take Venom long to see why, as the stimulation sends their entire body into a feedback loop of neurological signals and pleasure chemicals. Venom has never felt such mind-erasing ecstasy, nor such relieved contentment after Eddie releases his glob of reproductive goo. “We should do that at _least_ once a day,” Venom suggests as Eddie wipes their hands clean. “Maybe a few times.”

“That was the schedule before you came along,” Eddie says.

“So we’re on the same page, then,” Venom says.

-ooo-

Venom hates Eddie’s attitude about sexual pleasure. He flips through the new releases on Eddie’s favorite porn website while Eddie figures out where he put the Vaseline after yesterday’s mid-afternoon endorphin bomb. “Not that one,” Eddie says. “That’s two guys.”

“You know I can’t tell the difference unless we can smell them,” Venom said.

Eddie has found the Vaseline. “Well, I can.”

“Sexual binarism is an absurd evolutionary path,” Venom says. “You can only mate with half your species. It’s wasteful.”

“What does your species do? Clone itself?”

“We enter a budding phase and find a convenient mate to merge ganglia with,” Venom explains, reductively. “it’s less fun than what you do, but efficient.”

“So you’ve got a bunch of kids oozing around your homeworld?”

“Only one,” Venom says. “The budding phase is infrequent.” He tries to shield Eddie from his grief.

Eddie mistakes Venom’s frustration with the universe for frustration with him. “Fine, we’ll watch the gay porn. For you.”

A couple of minutes in, Venom observes, “Our body is responding to this quite well.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says.

-ooo-

Venom loves Mrs. Chen. She always remembers to ask how Venom is doing, even though he’s kept himself hidden since that one time he ate a gangster for her. She keeps a fresh stock of tater tots and lets him know when there’s a new variety of chocolate bar for him to try. She is patient when, for example, Venom makes Eddie sniff every type of soap in the store until they find one they can both tolerate. (Venom makes a compelling plea for the cucumber melon body wash, but Eddie’s fragile masculinity wins again; they settle for Ivory.)

Two days before Christmas, Mrs. Chen asks if Eddie has plans for the holiday. 

“Hallmark movie marathon,” Eddie grumbles. 

On Christmas Eve, a man comes to their door with a liquor store carton full of Chinese takeout, enough for two days of meals. There’s a Christmas card on top. Eddie almost weeps. 

“Don’t hold it in on my account,” Venom says.

-ooo-

Venom hates Annie. He hates her because he likes her and wishes her well, because he has been inside her mind long enough to know he will protect her until Eddie’s last breath. But she’ll never go back to Eddie, no matter how much she’ll always love him, and she’s right not to. Eddie knows he’s lost her, despite Venom’s pep talks to the contrary. Knowing that depresses Eddie. A depressed Eddie is hard to live with.

-ooo-

Venom loves chocolate. Eddie thinks it gets him a little high, but Venom thinks it’s just so delicious that it cleanses all the pessimism from both their minds.

-ooo-

Venom hates celery. It tastes insipid, has no caloric value, and gets stuck in their teeth. Eddie keeps some in the fridge to munch on. “Just to remind you who’s boss,” Eddie says.

“Just to maintain your futile illusion of control,” Venom says.

“Same difference,” Eddie says.

-ooo-

Venom loves writing. Eddie turned down a TV job, which might have earned them more money but would have made it difficult to keep Venom a secret, in favor of an investigative journalism website. It pays the rent and the gym membership, and it allows both privacy and teamwork. Eddie’s favorite part is the adrenaline rush of discovery, but Venom prefers the craft of the story, Eddie’s rhetorical tricks to hook his readers, the bloodless violence of an enemy’s life ruined by arrangements of light on a screen. “It’s a pity we can’t eat them all after we’ve destroyed them,” Venom says.

-ooo-

Venom hates TV appearances. Eddie gets invited onto talk shows when he breaks a big story, and the extra money and exposure are good for his career. But they raise Eddie’s cortisol levels, and Venom has to keep his mouth shut. TV hosts deserve to have their heads bitten off. 

“Please? Not even Bill Maher?”

“No.”

“Not even Lou Dobbs?”

“What’s the point?”

Venom pauses just long enough for Eddie to think he’s dropped it. “Not even Piers Morgan?”

Eddie caves. “Okay, in the extremely unlikely event that we’re in the same room as Piers Morgan, you may bite his bloated, bullshit head off.”

“I’ll make it look like an accident,” Venom promises.

-ooo-

Venom loves the saltwater swimming pool at the gym. With his new job, Eddie has enough money for a membership again. The first day they go to work out, Venom smells the warm, clean brine and drags Eddie toward it, ignoring Eddie’s protestations that he’s more of an elliptical and free weights guy. Swimming is an unnatural exercise for humans, and therefore good for their respiratory function and muscle stamina. But this has nothing to do with keeping Eddie’s body alive. For half an hour a day, Venom feels like he’s come home.

-ooo-

Venom hates showers. “I thought you liked water,” Eddie says. 

“I like being submerged, not being pelted with hot water bullets.”

“Well, I can’t go around smelling like swimming pool all day, so suck it up, buttercup.”

“A nice cucumber melon scent would make this much more tolerable,” Venom says.

-ooo-

Venom loves the thing that Eddie insists is not sex, although Eddie has not offered a better word for it. “Nobody else needs a word for getting jerked off by your alien symbiote’s slimy space tentacles.” While Eddie has a point, semantically, Venom takes offense. His appendages produce minimal secretions or discharge. Eddie is far slimier after a vigorous workout.

Eddie has also failed to mention the sleek and quivering appendage up his ass, expanding and pulsing to provide just the right pressure, and smaller tendrils at his nipples, the backs of his knees, neck, ears, tongue, toes. Between his fingers like they are holding hands. Venom feels every point of contact, every knot and release of sensory intensity. And Eddie feels it too, Venom’s body as an extension of his own. He’s gained some control of Venom’s appendages, mostly to move them away when he doesn’t like a sensation. He’ll gain more. Venom supposes that’s only fair.

After they come, their brain floods with attachment hormones, and they let themselves doze off. 

Venom knows it’s just neurochemicals, but in those moments, he loves Earth.


End file.
